86 Responses

Email: yeah, well there’s a subset of folks who just don’t fricking respond. As she said “I have 2 hours of free time a night. I’d rather be spending that time with my husband and the family vs texting/emailing my friends (me and others). Can’t argue with that..but that’s how you end up with no friends…which kinda sucks if you’re getting a divorce.

Ghostbursters: Christ, I’m so tired of hearing about this. The old one was “good” but it’s seen it’s day. I’ll watch the reboot on tv next year maybe. I’ll not see it in theatres because I want to see new stuff there. Why people have to “reboot” stuff is beyond me. Most of them have been worse than the first movie.Report

It is becoming more and more obvious that one of the primary functions of the culture wars is to keep people interested and invested in aspects of popular culture that most would have otherwise grown weary of long ago.Report

Depends on the remake. And on the moneymaking mechanisms. Netflix will greenlight anything. (This is a bit of a joke. My friend writes pitches that he doesn’t actually want to get greenlit — actual productions mean actual work.)Report

I think its less culture war and more normal course of consumerism. What you buy isn’t only about the qualities of the product itself, it’s what your choice in that purchase says about you as an person. Maybe it’s becoming more pervasive but I don’t think it’s exactly a new phenomenon. The introduction of social justice politics and social media into the mix maybe gives it a nastier tone.Report

I don’t think that it’s a new phenomenon at all. For as long as there has been a consumer culture, there have been marketers trying to sell products based on identity and aspiration. And I think that most of the current culture wars are just a continuation of that.

Are you a #woke feminist who wants to stick it to those troglodytes who say that women aren’t funny? Then go see Ghostbusters and support it on social media and write glowing articles about it.

Are you a #redpill kind of guy who is tired of political correctness and cultural marxism invading every aspect of our once great nation? Then refuse to see Ghostbuters and attack its defenders on Twitter and write inane thinkpieces about how Hollywood has been taken over by non-funny feminists.

These folks say very little about whether the movie might or might not appeal to your individual aesthetic sense of what makes for an enjoyable movie. Because your individual aesthetic sense is just an emergent phenomenon of your bourgeois indoctrination/politically correct brainwashing. After all, the personal is political.Report

@j-r — This is too cynical tho. The mainstream film industry remains pretty male dominated, so let women be happy when we get a title focussed on us. It remains true that the majority of films this year will focus on stories about men.

And sure, some women-oriented titles will be really good, but most will be mediocre, just like the male-oriented films. So it goes. This is mass culture.

And before you drop bullshit, yeah, in an ideal utopia, no one would care if a film featured a Nigerian lesbian or a British white dude — stories are stories. But that is not the world we live in.

Our lives are lived in the particulars. There is no “universal story” — and if there was, why assume it is white and male?

Many of us are severely underrepresented in the media. Specifically, my group, transgender women, are not only underrepresented, but we are grossly misrepresented. It’s disgusting and horrible. The narratives shown about us are mostly dishonest. Our lives are not like that. Our thoughts are not like that. We are not like that.

The truth is not always pretty, but it ain’t the shallow “Lifetime movie” version either. Fuck that shit. Truth is truth.

It seems like, we can tell our own truths. No one else can. So it goes.

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I saw Ghostbusters today. It was fun. It was silly. But I was entertained. And yes — I FUCKING LIKED SEEING WOMEN PLAY THOSE ROLES, CUZ I’M A WOMAN.

They were like me. They were people will flaws like my flaws and aspirations like my aspirations. It was just different from a dude film.

I thought the villain was ham-fisted. He was a sad nerdboy pissed at the world. Basically, he was the SJ version of a “gamergate” guy.

Those guys exist. But still, it’s a shitty stereotype.

But if you fuckers can expect me to accept a world with Silence of the fucking Lambs, you can handle this.

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Was the production of this film “cynical” — maybe, but why assume that? That assumption says much about you and not so much about the film producers.

People like me exist. We believe we are underserved by the current market.

WE CAN PROVE THIS USING SIMPLE MATH.

A film producer who steps up and says, “Women are underserved. Let’s make something for them.” — this is admirable. It is not pandering. It is responding to real people with real wishes.

Basically, judging women-in-general is rather different from judging sadboy redpill-fucks-in-general. There are a ton of movies for sadboy nerds. Always have been. How many “geeky dude gets the girl” movies have been made?

I grew up with that crap shoved down my throat. As a woman, maybe I wanna see “geeky girl gets the guy” (or even better, “geeky girl gets the girl.”)

(And thank the stars for John Waters and the original Hairspray. That shit was literally unprecedented.)

Anyway, the world is actually sexist, manifestly and obviously. The “culture war” is a shitshow, but what do you expect? Paradise? A conflict free world where everyone is always at there best and no one ever strikes out at the bullshit?

Women are underrepresented. Minorities are underrepresented. Trans folks are misrepresented, to a point that is fucking obscene. Some level of pushback is admirable. You should support this.

Honestly, you seem smarter than the dumb fucks like DD and “notme” and so on. You seem “right leaning,” but not stupid. You can see this, right?

Ghostbusters is a dumb popcorn movie. I liked it. It was loud and colorful and a great way to spend the afternoon — and honestly I had A VERY BAD DAY TODAY DEALING WITH SOME REAL LIFE SHIT THAT I WON’T DESCRIBE BUT I FUCKING NEEDED A NICE STUPID FILM TO TAKE MY MIND AWAY FROM SOMETHING SO FUCKING AWFUL I WANTED TO KILL MYSELF.

Blah. Sometimes a dumb-funny movie is just what you need. This movie features women. That was really cool.

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I fucking hate the culture war. But even more I hate snobby cynicism about the culture war. This shit matters. It matters a lot.

Anyone who thinks they’re “above it” should just shut the fuck up.Report

I mean, good grief. No one needs to watch the movie if they don’t want to. That said, considering I’ve watched Bruce Wayne’s parents get murdered maybe 3983498023902934 times the last ten years and I kinda don’t want to see the Spiderman origin story again either, plus how many times will I watch Superman arrive on Earth from Krypton? — my point is, people obviously like remakes and reboots and spin-offs and recycled pop culture.

Is this good? I dunno. Opinions vary. But the question is, why the big fucking freakout over this movie? What made this reboot so different?

The guys freaking out over Ghostbusters really were sexist shitpuppies. I mean, they manifestly were. That doesn’t mean everyone who doesn’t like the movie is a shitpuppy, but it does mean that the conversation about the movie is happening in that context. So it goes. If you step into a toxic culture space, you will encounter badness.

If you don’t wanna see it, then don’t see it. If you don’t wanna talk about it, then the internet is large. You can surely find other conversations that interest you.

There is a “random” button on TV Tropes. Click away. You’ll never be starved for non-Ghostbusters related content on the internet. From here you can get to a random page on Wikipedia. Click, click, click. Find something cool.

If you’re bored, you’re boring.

Anyway, the majority of movies out of Hollywood are written by men and star men in the key roles. This remains true today.

(I think many people perceive that the balance has shifted. They are wrong. It has not. If you think that “too many” movies these days feature women or minorities or whatever, you might ask what is causing you to make that cognitive error. Hint: it’s not the facts. It’s your perception of the facts.)

Speaking as a woman, it’s really great to see more female-written and/or female-focused media these days. It’s great to see more minorities. It’s amazing to see trans women represented accurately (which remains incredibly rare).

You don’t have to care about this. If you don’t care, then don’t care. Go do something else.

I care.

You know that cliche where people with money can say, “Money doesn’t matter,” but poor people know that money does. A person with much food can take food for granted. A hungry person cannot. Etc.

The analogy is obvious, right?

Now, we add Sturgeon’s law to the mix. Sure, maybe the GB-reboot will suck. I dunno. It seems like opinions vary. I have some time off this week, so I may duck into a matinee and see it — if I’m sufficiently bored. I doubt it will hit me like Max Max or Jessica Jones did, but neither am I expecting that.

Regarding the endlessly aggrieved sexist manchildren who have been grousing over this movie — I mean they are just rotten little shits. We should treat them as such.

I’ve seen studies indicating that when you ask people what the gender breakdown in a room is, men report “50/50” once women clear 20% and “female dominated” without even getting to 50%.(I wish I could remember WHERE I saw those studies)

You get very similar numbers when asked whether men or women participated equally in a conversation. And even female teachers will give the same wrong responses when discussing classroom participation.Report

By the way, the “20%” figure not the number of women in the room. It’s the amount of time women speak, specifically students in a classroom setting. It got cited once by Geena Davis in an interview, but it does not appear in any of the papers published on her website.

Note, I suspect it is true. I’ve certainly observed this. People indeed overestimate “diversity,” where a small amount of diversity feels like a “very diverse” environment.

Which indicates a weird cognitive bias. If one woman and one Chinese guy in a room of eleven white dudes feels diverse to you, then you need to recalibrate your sense of diversity.

Anyhow, I’ve seen people suggest that the “20%” figure comes from Dale Spender’s work, but her stuff isn’t published free online.

Yeah, I can’t find it either, but I recall reading about it somewhere substantive. (Which doesn’t mean much these days). Maybe I just can’t figure out the right key word searches — psychology and gender studies aren’t my area — and frankly the internet is pretty cluttered with gender studies, arguments, and such that keep getting thrown up.

(And the article I recall noted that roughly 20% was true in studies for speaking, and true for crowds — separate studies.)Report

We always wish the data was better organized. That’s one reason I did my machine learning thesis using stock market data. Because, if nothing else, there’s a lot of money in those data sets. Clean, accurate, and complete.

Some people like the problem of trying to clean data. I just wanted to see if I could show that the boundaries of the problem were creating implicit fitness conditions that could be addressed inside of the explicit fitness criteria.

What I found was “yes”, “probably” and “Not related directly to the problem, but if you do THIS thing in THIS particular way for THIS problem you find your results are much more reliable*”

Of course, right after I had finished that I had a *fantastic* idea for mitigating local minimum problems for that particular type of problem, but I’ve been too busy since to even play with it. (Even though I *also* found a really efficient algorithm for comparing how similar two strings are that would really speed up my idea in practice).

If you don’t wanna see it, then don’t see it. If you don’t wanna talk about it, then the internet is large. You can surely find other conversations that interest you.

This. I have enough stuff just in my Netflix queue to keep me entertained for several years, even if they never make another show. Through in Hulu and Amazon Prime and I am set for life. Doctor Who alone will keep me going for a long time.

I do think that, apart from the overt sexism in the present case, people have this dread fear of not being current. It was disconcerting the first time I stood in a supermarket checkout looking at the magazine covers and realized I didn’t know who any of these people were. But then it was tremendously liberating when I also realized that I didn’t care.Report

Sure, but it plays into the larger issue of “hate crimes” as a class, in that once we’ve established that there are protected classes of people, it’s pretty easy to carve out all sorts of exceptions or enhancements for those classes, and just as easy to decide what constitutes a protected class (such as police).

Now I didn’t read the proposed law, so I hope it conforms to other federal hate crime statutes (in that a prosecutor has to show that animosity towards the class was at play), but if IIRC, many state hate crime bills are not as restrained, and on this front, states like to follow the feds.

The real problem (if I can grease this slope just a bit) is that government does love to protect itself, and has a habit of bringing down the hammer on those who are not good, compliant citizens, especially those citizens with limited access to the legal system. I mean, police already love deciding any struggle is resisting arrest, how much of a stretch is it to decide that a struggle is also attempted assault on an officer?Report

I’m on the fence about the concept of hate crimes. There are a couple of good arguments in favor of something like them, though:

1) Certain types of violent crime are not just an attack on the victim but rather an intentional act of intimidation against a broader class. Terrorism would be a reasonable term for it, and I can see the argument for additional penalties. But if that’s the reason, I’d want the application of the law to be pretty darned narrow. That’s a tough needle to thread.

2) Certain types of crimes were historically underprosecuted by local authorities, so having the option for the federal government to step in and ensure that justice is done is important.

In this case, it just seems stupid. The first one doesn’t apply because it’s hard to argue that people are not being punished sufficiently for murdering cops. Unless we plan to add “boiling in oil” or “buried alive with your children” to the list of penalties, there’s sort of a maximum distance we can turn that knob.

And if somebody wants to convince me that local authorities are not prosecuting the murder of police officers, they’re going to have to bring some fairly serious data to support that claim.Report

I understand all that and I agree it has to be something that is very, very narrow. Which is why I worry, not because the feds are thinking about adding the class to the list (since the federal law is relatively narrow), but because the states are not so careful with their criteria. It’s a setup for letting privileged interests get themselves classified.

Think of it this way. AAs are a protected class. We have a problem in some areas with AAs being treated more harshly by the police. If the police get to layer on yet another legal vestment to protect themselves with, then we’ll have any claim of hate crime by the police of AAs being met by a counter claim of hate by AAs for the police. Guess whose claim trumps?

Personally, I find all such legal protections of law enforcement to be miscarriages, since the executive branch already enjoys vast structural & cultural privileges.Report

Oh, it will definitely be abused. Right now it looks like “assaulting an officer” is a potential blank check for extra charges, so if every case of assault on a police officer is a hate crime, we have a new trick for running up the scoreboard.Report

I think you’re getting what hate crimes are and their purpose a bit wrong here. They don’t create protected classes, at least not in the sense that it’s a hate crime to kill ethnic group A but not a hate crime to kill ethnic group B. Instead, it makes it a crime to target a member of a particular type of group (racial, religious, sexual identity, etc) on the basis of that person’s membership in that group, regardless of which group it may be. In other words, it can still be hate crime to kill a cishet white guy.

The other thing is that the purpose of the laws aren’t really to demonstrate any special hostility to this type of crime, but instead to provide a way to get around double jeopardy if the local jurisdiction’s cops/prosecutors/jurors are unwilling to effectively punish the crime. And even in the age of BLM and cell phone video, I have a hard time believing that it’s difficult enough to convict cop killers in this country that we need a federal hate crime law to deal with it.Report

I think I’m the one that ought to apologize; assuming that you didn’t already know this, rather than that you spoke slightly imprecisely, was silly of me. I just get irritated because I think a lot of people do misunderstand hate crime laws, and also anti-discrimination laws, in the way I described.Report

Like I said, it’s a common misunderstanding. Unless, of course, @notme is implicitly admitting that racial minorities, LGBT, etc., are far more likely to need the protection of hate crime laws than “[his] folks”Report

Scalzi writes: “Holtzmann is brilliant and spectrum-y and yet pretty much social anxiety-free”

So, 2016’s Strong Female Character, then.

“Oh noes! Ghostbusters has womens in it!”

As Kim points out, making GB all-women was a stroke of genius, because it has a prewritten defense against any criticism. “Oh, you don’t like new GB? That’s because you hate women.” “No, it’s because–” “–it’s because it has women. Stop lying! The only difference is that there’s women in it now and if you don’t like it then the only possible reason is that you hate women!” “Whatever.” “Look, we’re not going to get anywhere if you aren’t willing to have a conversation about your sexist bigotry.”

“it’s been well-reviewed and at $46 million, is the highest grossing opening for its director or any of its stars and perfectly in line with studio estimates for the weekend.”

hehehehehehe left unsaid is that it ended up in second place on its opening weekend and the toys were on clearance shelves before the movie even came outReport

Adapted from a comment by me over at Will’s Other Place, where he also posted this link:

The attempted takedown by Zacharek of the 1984 film is remarkably underpowered given that it is the crux of the social point she is making. Almost as if it’s a position she holds more for the purpose of making that social point than because she actually has a strong take on the film. (Perhaps this is a longstanding, passionate view of hers, but regardless she’s wrong: her argument is astonishingly thin. It’s a hilarious film and a masterwork (dammit!).)

Her argument about how maybe this year’s film will be future generations’ 1984 Ghostbusters is both unrelated and delusional. Ghostbusters (1984) can both be every bit the superior film, and jerks can therefore denounce the reboot as abusively they have, and it could every bit as much still turn out to be the case when all the years pass. But also, it won’t, because there is no example like that. The 1932 Scarface? Seriously? That’s her example? Ghostbusters was a legitimate sensation (rightly), and has remained so, however much Zacharek does or doesn’t think it merited. As she suggests, I was unaware that there was a previous Scarface film. No one’e ever going to be unaware that this Ghostbusters was a remake of a generational megahit. They might like his one better – it’s more up-to-date technically and probably reflects our times better socially, but it’s not going to be anyone’s childhood the way Zacharek seems to concede the original was.

I was similarly incredulous about similar predictions made about The Force Awakens. No Star Wars are going to be for this or later generations what the original Star Wars films, or even Ghostbusters, was for kids in those generations. That’s not how kids operate. They have their own things. Latter-day installations of dated series are not the things that generations of kids define their childhoods culturally by. Sorry, just no. And their own things aren’t even necessarily movie-theater movies (obviously – Pokemon Go, anyone? Halo Seventeen?). That is the sense in which film might be (relatively) dying, and Zacharek, though to her credit she brings it up, then just doesn’t really consider that change in the media obsessions of young people as relevant to her argument at all.

(The closest thing I know of to the kind of pattern Zacharek imagines from recent years might be Mad Max: Fury Road, which definitely inspired a devoted following to rival that of the originals. But that’s bar-lowering: the Mad Max films, while classics, simply weren’t the phenomena that either Star Wars or Ghostbusters were. They were hits, but they weren’t generation-defining. Subculture-defining (for one generation), maybe.)Report

I took my older spawn, age eight, to see The Force Awakens. She definitely wanted to go. Her age cohort are very much aware of Star Wars. She seemed to enjoy the movie, paying attention the whole time rather than dropping broad hints about additional snacks. But since then has been pretty much nothing. Star Wars is a thing for her, but far from the defining cultural phenomenon of her childhood.

So what is? Minecraft. Both she and her sister (age six) are obsessed with it. They both have Kindles, which in practice are mostly Minecraft players, and they obsessively watch Minecraft videos on YouTube.

Speaking of which, YouTube is the medium of choice for most of their pop cultural intake. And not slick professionally produced videos. The older one went through a phase of watching videos by teenage girls talking about stuff like organizing school supplies.Report

I’ll see your anecdata, and raise you. My kids never liked the cartoons for some reason, but really enjoyed the originals, and have watched them a lot because their friend’s parents have the Star Wars DVDs. One of my kids cried in a certain scene in Force Awakens.

Star Wars was defining for a generation, but it was really the only decent all-ages space opera for the longest time. Lucas crowded-out his competition, and its really only the Guardians of the Galaxy that can now claim to compete in that sandbox.Report

Since there’s no thread to discuss the Convention Day 2, I’ll start one here.

I was really appalled by Christie’s mock trial. Calling for the imprisonment of your political opponents should be way way beyond the pale. One of this country’s great successes has been the smooth hand-off of power from one administration to the next, even when the parties have been bitter rivals.

It is not acceptable for senior politicians to turn opponents into enemies. That is just too dangerous a road.

(Collateral point: Is there any point at which NPR will note that the level of demonization of Democrats going on in Republican leadership is unprecedented? Mara Liason referred to Christie’s speech only as “brutal”.)Report

” Calling for the imprisonment of your political opponents should be way way beyond the pale.”

Except for the part where, y’know, those political opponents actually did do things that other people have gone to prison for.

That’s important to remember in all this, that nobody is saying Clinton did not have her own email server and did not copy information from an SCI network onto it. We get plenty of Clintonsplaining about nothingburgers and wasn’t-then/shouldn’t-be and how this is all politically motivated, but everyone agrees that she actually did do the thing people are accusing her of doing.Report

I see this is a purely team-sports issue rather than a values, ethics, or legal issue. As in, were this to have all transpired with someone on the other side of party lines, I see pretty much everyone arguing the exact opposite of what they are now.

How bad she got caught in the stupid and entirely unnecessary lies about it all, though… That’s likely going to leave a mark, on both sides of the aisle.Report

Apparently not. At most, it appears she recieved information that was improperly marked. In fact, I’ve not seen one reputable source indicate she sent any of the improperly marked information.

We get plenty of Clintonsplaining about nothingburgers and wasn’t-then/shouldn’t-be and how this is all politically motivated, but everyone agrees that she actually did do the thing people are accusing her of doing.

That’s what happens when you make up what happened. Reality fails to deliver.

Although one would think a Republican led FBI report indicating no laws were broken and even making the “administrative remedies” argument casually conflated emails sent and received — would be sufficient to indicate that it is, in fact, a nothing-burger.

Hope springs eternal for Charlie Brown and that football though.Report

Depending on a radical reinterpretation of a law’s plain language to reach a desired result is…entirely in keeping with modern liberal philosophy, actually, so I guess your response to this shouldn’t be surprising.

Depending on a radical reinterpretation of a law’s plain language to reach a desired result is…entirely in keeping with modern liberal philosophy, actually, so I guess your response to this shouldn’t be surprising.

So Comey’s a liberal, that’s what you’re saying? He radically reinterpreted the law? Why exactly should I believe YOUR interpretation over the guy with ALL the information, a reputation for being tough, and if anything a political ax to grind against Clinton?

What information do you have that he didn’t? What background in law, classified information, etc do you have that he was missing that makes him wrong and you right?

Well?

Well, you haven’t.

Actually I have. Not SCIF-level stuff, but that wasn’t what was found on her server. I have dealt with business side equivalents (right up to having admin rights on DB’s storing business information worth tens of millions), and on the government side dealing with stuff like rocket flight data, DoD contract data, etc. Some of which was more heavily protected than anything on Clinton’s server.

From the information released, if a full audit had been done of 4 years of work, where the “iffy” stuff was 110 emails (53 chains) most of which I was the recipient of…..nothing would have happened administratively beyond “We found this. These are the ones you sent. Remember to think about this when you send stuff”. No punishment, no retraining, no letter in my file, not even a closed-door vocal reprimand.

But you go right ahead. You CLEARLY know more than the FBI, right?Report

Interesting. Here we have someone kowtowing to authority, showing blind unquestioning respect for an authority figure’s decision, and angrily declaring that the rest of us are just idiots who don’t actually have any moral, intellectual, or legal basis for our disagreement. And this someone is not a conservative.Report

Was Comey in the tank for Clinton? Or do you know more about the law and details of this than Comey? It’s binary set here.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t declare it obviously illegal and corrupt right after the head of the FBI, after a massive and expensive investigation that involved not only reading every email but scouring every corner of the server and State’s own archives to find each and every one, even those that had been deleted, says “No laws were broken”.

UNLESS you either believe the head of the FBI is corrupt or incompetent, or you personally have data the FBI doesn’t.

I’m just asking you which you believe. Is he corrupt? Or do you have information he doesn’t?

“[S]even e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).”

“[Secretary Clinton] also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries…[W]e assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.”

What’s happening here is that the Presidential campaign is Clinton versus Trump, and if Comey’s FBI actually filed charges then he’d go down in history as the man who put Donald J. Trump in the White House. And he god damn well knows it. Charges are eminently justified in this instance and anyone who wasn’t Clinton-running-against-Trump would be (and should be) toast, which is why we got that weird list of all the wrong stuff Clinton did in a statement declaring that she wasn’t going to be charged. Comey is trying to preempt any “Clinton defense” by other people accused of mishandling classified information.

“Actually I have. Not SCIF-level stuff, but that wasn’t what was found on her server.”

Oooookay. At this point I can’t really continue the conversation, because you’ve just admitted that you don’t know what you’re talking about. No, bro, being the IT guy for a server classified DoD Top Secret is not relevant experience, any more than a scrub nurse at an outpatient clinic can talk about neurosurgery.Report

I have one kinda-question. On the Raymond Chandler link, it points to a shitty little Gizmodo article which is entirely cribbed from a longer, actual article, this. Now, the Gizmodo article is ad-driven soup. Its writer produced nothing new. They just copied someone else’s thoughts. Yet they showed me ads. The article on Lithub, on other hand, is pretty interesting.

For the record, I’m a huge Chandler fan. The man was a genius.

But anyway, I’ve seen you guys do this a few times. I’m wondering, why? Why not just link us to the real-content and let us skip the content-free garbage “buzz media” site?

Do they pay you? If so, then fine. But own up to it. Maybe. I dunno. It’s not like you owe me an explanation. I just find it mildly irritating to see mediocrity rewarded on the backs of actually effort. I think this site should aim to do better. I think you should link to the real source of content.

Sometimes I link to the portal article and sometimes to the article itself. It depends.

I’m not big on Gawker, but io9 is the exception to that, in part because they link to interesting stuff I otherwise wouldn’t see and I think their summaries tend to be good. The link to the original article is in theirs and people who want to read more can.Report

Interesting link about a new power cell. This one uses a very thin membrane that permits osmosis of salt water to fresh water until the system reaches equilibrium sal content. The osmosis process is, of course, moving ions, and the membrane is using those ions to generate power. Current estimates suggest that one square meter of membrane can produce 1 MW. Now stick an array of these in the estuaries of a river as it empties into the sea…Report

That essay about the man who hates his dog was really well written but it was also a lie. The man loves his dog. He loved his previous one and he loves his current one. When he current one dies any dog he gets would be extremely lucky to be adopted by him.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.